What is the future of certain parts of our Military Vehicle hobby? What I'm asking is are there certain types of vehicles that are going to fade away and never been seen again because they are unavailable to us as collectors? Currently our hobby expands across all aspects of Military vehicles from Mules to M915s. We have collectors with all sorts of vehicles like repleca gun trucks. The gun trucks of Vietnam are very popular among many collectors and are easily (and correctly) built on 2.5 and 5 tons as well as on M151s and M37s. The main reason these are still buildable is because soldiers built these on the base model trucks and transformed them into the awesome gun trucks.
Look back at when the military first started cutting jeeps up (and eventually crushing them) before allowing them to be sold to the public. That honestly hurt our hobby alot. Then the government stopped allowing humvees to be sold to the public, another blow to our hobby. Now our government is using MRAPs and ASVs which can not be sold to the public, and there is no good way to replecate these. Is this going to destroy a certain section of military vehicle collection? There still should be LMTVs sold to the public, but no actual "gun trucks". How are we going to perserve that part of history when we are no longer allowed to own any of them? I know we have different view points on military vehicle history, many are restoring for historical purposes, many use for off-road, and many more like to customize the trucks to their needs and wants. No matter what your use or purpose for owning a military vehicle, you are still maintaining pieces of history and I worry about our hobby in the future as the government reduces our access to these future pieces of history. Remember, one day all veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan will be in the same position our WWII and Vietnam vets (those still with us). Just think of how many vets ask you about your trucks and want to tell you their story. Is this a part we are going to lose for all of us current and future vets?
Man, this is a lot of ground to cover.
First, the issue with current vehicles not being released (MRAP, HMMWV, etc.) are only part of the problem. I would like to see those restricted vehicles made available to the public, but I'm not going to waste any time or energy trying to make it happen, because it will never happen. I mean, monkeys will fly before these things get released (in any kind of significant numbers).
The two major reasons are that the govt. doesn't want people owning armor and the response of the general public. You can already see that large segments of the population are uncomfortable with the militarization of police departments and a lot of those folks would also have concerns about private citizens having them. The govt. not wanting people to own them is probably in large part due to them not wanting to have to explain why such vehicles are being released.
Certainly a few here and there will be saved (even the military, which practically has no budget for historic preservation, has a guntruck saved) by somebody.
In closing: Never gonna' happen and it's only a single component of the hobby, so we live with it.
The larger discussion of the future of the hobby, preservation, etc.
The MV hobby is part of the old car hobby. Not everyone agrees, but I think it's a pretty valid opinion. I think most of the people I've met in 10+ years have been "car guys", not just "army truck guys". It's amazing how many people in this hobby are ex-musclecar or sports car guys. I talked to 3 or 4 different people at the Ga Rally who are alot like me: They're really into the MV's, but part of what pushed them into the hobby (or pushed them deeper) was the cost of the (other) car hobbies. I say it alot: I'm a refugee from the Mopar hobby. I had cool cars and enjoyed them, but it got to the point that I just couldn't afford it. A project car is $20K+ and then it's another $50K to finish it.
All that being said, I figure there are 4 or 5 different kinds of people in the MV hobby:
1. Hardcore history nuts who want to preserve an important piece of history for the future.
2. Car guys who like the history or the neatness of the vehicles (I think this is me) and they want a toy.
3. Guys who want the ultimate macho dude truck
4. Offroaders who think the mil-spec toughness overcomes the inherent downsides (low horsepower, etc.)
What's the point of the above "tying the MV hobby to the old car hobby?"
Both hobbies share a lot of issues for the future.
1. The car hobbies are having to deal with rapid inflation: Sure, you'll read articles in Forbes about the cooling off of the collector car segment as investment (read: the prices are soft or softening). Anomalies like the recent $52 million Ferarri (
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/20...egrades-us-all-and-here-are-five-reasons-why/) are statistically insignificant outliers. Maybe the values of some cars, or a cross section, have gone down 1.2% (or more likely, they just haven't increased as much as inflation), but the
cost of restoring/maintaining them has skyrocketed. I don't think you're going to get a decent paint job on an antique car restoration for less than about $10K. Anyone rebuilt an engine recently? Unless you have something like a small block Chevy where you can buy cams and cranks at Wal-Mart, it's crazy expensive.
And although a lot of our MV parts are inexpensive, due to massive govt. overstocks being liquidated and artificially suppressing the price, eventually the surplus will dry up and the prices will go up.
Wages have been stagnant for 30 years now and everyone (except those at the top) are simply losing ground. There are a lot less people now who have the wherewithal to throw $20K into a toy. So everything is going to hurt: special interest cars, boats, rv's, etc.
2. The MV hobby has gotten bigger and I don't mean the number of people in it. I mean the vehicles got bigger, because all the Jeeps dried up, their values went up and everyone moved on to Deuces and 5-tons. There are a lot of people who aren't in physical condition to deal with stuff of this size and let's not kid ourselves: the old car hobby isn't made up of teenagers. Younger people aren't moving into the car hobby fast enough to replace the older enthusiasts leaving (which I'll touch on later). The larger size of the core vehicles (deuce/5-ton) is also creating a problem with where you put them: Although many members live in rural areas where the physical space and zoning problems are a non-issue, there is a marked movement of people back into urban areas from the suburbs. Simply put, people are either staying in the cities or leaving the suburbs to go back to the cities. The post-WWII expansion into the suburbs was a 60+ year trend and high fuel costs and the traffic nightmares of trying to get in and out of the cities every day are probably partly to blame for the trend ending. How do you have a deuce or something like that when you live in an urban area? Heck, it's hard to park anything in the city.
3. Younger people have to replace older people in a hobby. At one point, the most valuable collector cars were like the Ford Model A's. They dominated AACA events and pulled the most money. Today? They've fallen greatly in value
because most of the people who liked them enough to push their values up are dead. At some point, the same thing will happen to musclecars and classic ('50's and '60's) sportscars.
But who's going to be a car collector 20 years from now? Younger people are seemingly turning their back on cars in general, both as transportation and as a special interest item. Much ink has been spilled (both in print and digitally) about this and the opinions vary-some folks think this is because young people are broke; with astonishing debt from college and low paying entry level jobs that don't leave enough money for a used Honda Civic, let alone something cool or old. These people think that if the economic conditions improved that these younger people would become car nuts. This view is well explained here:
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/20...a-shows-that-young-people-do-care-about-cars/
The other train of thought is simply that the cost of interesting cars-whether it's a '55 Chevy, a '66 Mustang, an old Triumph, a GPW, a turbo RX7-whatever, is pushing the younger folks off (I don't think it's just millennials), regardless of economic conditions. This means that even if they started making better money, they've decided cars, either as a transportation appliance or as something fun/cool just aren't worth the expenditure. I think this somewhat dovetails with point #2. This viewpoint is explained here, although I don't think it's a whole-hearted attempt:
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/20...air-with-the-car-over-americans-driving-less/
In closing (tl; dr)
It's hard to say where the future of the MV hobby is going. It may continue to grow, as refugees from the car hobby look for something fun and cheap(er).
It may shrink, for any # of reasons-higher prices, continuing economic doldrums, higher fuel prices (think about what $6 a gallon diesel would do to the hobby).
Unfortunately, I don't think we have a lot of control where it goes. The external factors are things we don't have a lot of control over. I think the best we can is to be good stewards of the cause: We take care of the equipment and when we're gone, try to make sure it ends up with someone who will care for it.
Once a war is over We are quick to trash the very items that saved our bacon and brought many servicemen home safe. Just Google pictures of the WWII Air Force graveyards of fighters and bombers, harbors full of subs and ships, and lots full of Jeeps and trucks galore.
If the military spent any (significant) money on preserving history, there'd be millions of people screaming about them wasting money. I don't agree with it, I think if we can afford to spend 43% of total global military expenditures, that we can set aside a few million for some better and more diverse museums.
As for myself, the HMMWV is overrated, and no civilian really needs one of those or an MRAP...
You must think everyone in the hobby is only an offroader. What about all the people interested in the history? What about the collectors who are ex-military who want a vehicle like what they drove in the service? The MV hobby is not just guys going to Moab.
opcorn:
